Trump’s claim that he did ‘substantially’ better with blacks than other GOP presidential candidates

“If you remember, I wasn’t going to do well with the African American community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting — I won’t go into details — but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years. And now we’re going to take that to new levels.”— President Trump, remarks on Black History Month, Feb. 1

President Trump ranted about “fake news” during an appearance to mark Black History Month. But he needs to be careful about spreading fake news of his own.

Trump appears to have focused on the fact that he got 8 percent of the vote vs. 6 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012 and 4 percent for John McCain in 2008. In the polling world, a two- or even four-percentage-point shift is relatively small. It certainly does not qualify as “substantially more.”

Moreover, who was running as a Democrat in 2008 and 2012? Oh, yes, the first African American candidate, Barack Obama. Trump was not running against a black man, so that further discounts his claims of a substantial achievement.

Strictly by the numbers, Trump actually did worse than any Republican running against a white man, though in effect he came close to tying George W. Bush in 2000 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump is kidding himself if he thinks he did substantially better with African American voters. Perhaps he should be pleased he did not do worse, given some of his incendiary rhetoric. But it’s not anything to brag about.